Ghana To Host Africa Social Impact Forum

Ghana has been chosen to host a three-nation oil and gas, and infrastructure stakeholders forum on how to achieve effective social change and impact in the Africa.

The Uturn Africa Forum 2011, slated for Accra on September 15 this year, is on the theme “Catalysing Collaboration for Effective Social Change and Impact.”

The forum is to give policy business executives, actors in the oil, gas and infrastructure sectors and people and organisations interested in social impact issues the opportunity to share knowledge and learn new best practices as a sure way of achieving development.

It would be attended by a wide range of personalities, institutions and organisations from Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon and would engage the most influential leaders in critical discussions designed to create partnerships, networks, knowledge and collaborative pathways to achieve effective social change and impact.

Some of the speakers at the forum would include the Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Hanna Tetteh; the Chief Executive of the National Petroleum Authority, Mr Alex Mould; a representative of the State of Texas, Mr Jolanda Jones; the World Bank acting Country Director, Mr Dante Mossi and the Executive Vice-Chairman of Databank Financial Services, Mr Keli Gadzekpo.

The Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Uturn Africa, Mrs Doyin Oluntona, said the forum was important because it would give participants the opportunity to confront Africa’smulti-faceted problems with participatory approaches.

“The social sector cannot achieve effective impact without forging cross-border partnerships and alliances; the imperative to collaborate is now,” she explained.

Mr Gadzekpo said Databank associated itself with the forum because it wanted to move the frontiers of its corporate social responsibilities, some of which were centred on leadership and mentorship programmes.

He said the forum would give corporate bodies such as Databank the opportunity to share and harness knowledge on how others were going about their social interventions, adding that “we want to go beyond our financial intermediation to do much more in the social side.”

The Vice President of forum partner United Way Worldwide, Ms Janet L. Butler, said the organisation would be interested in sharing information on social issues along the development process and how local resources could be harnessed to address them.

Uturn Africa has piloted similar fora separately in the three countries between 2008 and 2010, which attracted multinational and indigenous company participation.

Other participating entities include Chevron, British American Tobacco, Ghana Chamber of Mines, the World Bank, Shell Oil, Total, Newmont, financial institutions, academia and politicians.